She++ #includewomen

Last night I had the good fortune to attend an event at Pasadena City College aimed at empowering women to pursue STEM careers, specifically computer science. There were a suite of panelists from industry that presented themselves as role models:

Jillian, Lan, Waverly, Dr. Wilkinson, Brandii, and Natalia

• Brandii Grace, game developer
• Jillian Greczek, Ph.D. candidate USC robotics
• Orjeta Taka, IRobot
• Lan Dang, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), PCC Alum
• Natalia Alonso, CS B.S. (in progress) CSUN, PCC Alum

First, Dr. Paul J. Wilkinson gave a stirring introduction to the program with a quiz covering common misconceptions and little-known facts about women in computer science.  Women are 5 times less likely to pursue STEM.  U of Akron and U of Winnepeg studies show that females hold negative attitudes towards computers.  Some women do not pursue CS because they are afraid to be seen by their peers as outcasts, plain, unfeminine, or nerdy.

Second, Brandii spoke about the reasons why women are not found in CS.  Self-labeling theory is the idea that we (women) allow ourselves to be seen as "less than" by using diminuitive terms for ourselves, such as girls or gals, that keeps us out of the ranks of the "boys club."  No role model theory is that since there are so few female CEOs of tech companies that women don't see opportunity for advancement in that field.  Pretty girl theory is the idea that parents positively reinforce girls, valuing their appearance, while parents positively reinforce boys for their actions.  Differentiated criticism is the idea that boys are allowed to try things and make mistakes that they can learn from whereas girls are taught that when they do something wrong, they should have known better, which prevents them from trying new things.  She has seen this in her experience as a game developer, when girls test a first-person shooter game and they are killed, they put down the game controller and never want to play the game again, whereas boys will try repeatedly to "beat" the situation.

Brandii cited the TV program "Silicon Valley" as a poor example of Hollywood reinforcing the stereotypes of men in programmer roles and women in adversarial or "window dressing" roles.  I have a similar problem with the show "Big Bang Theory."  How about some equality?!  Differentiated learning theory is the idea that men tend to store information in a linear (procedural) fashion where women tend to store information in a story, therefore giving men an advantage in a linear profession such as CS.  She counteracts this theory by arguing that 

ANYBODY CAN LEARN ANY SKILL 

but some people have an easier road due to some innate ability (biology).  Altogether Brandii highlighted many reasons for the lack of women in CS, including also: Hiring Bias Theory, Investor Bias Theory, and Bros-Hire-Bros Theory.  She told us a personal anecdote about her own journey to startup where an investor said to her face "obviously you have no tech experience" because she is an attractive blonde woman who in fact had many years of experience working for Microsoft and other companies.

Third, Jillian gave us an overview of Robotics and described her work with socially assistive robots.  She highlighted the subdisciplines in her field: Machine Learning, Manipulation, Localization & Mapping, Computer Vision, Multirobot Systems, Remote Presence, and Human-Robot Interaction.  She told a personal story about herself as a Type I Diabetic and described how that motivated her to work on robots that could be issued to children as a "buddy" to help them through the first month of their diagnosis.  Her goals are to create robots that would withstand long-term relationships through adaptive programming and socially appropriate (not annoying) charateristics.  She encouraged the students in the audience to get into research through a DREU or REU program, which supports women and minorities specifically.

Fourth, Orjeta gave us a perspective starting in communist Albania and ending in a fulfilling career in Pasadena at iRobot.  She had a love of mathematics, and her mantra or "battle cry" was

IF YOU LOVE SOMETHING, WHY NOT?

which means that if you love math, don't hesitate to study it just because you don't see other mathematicians that look like you.  She told students that it's good to pursue your passion and experience it first without letting social roadblocks prevent you from getting into it.  Then once you're in the field, FIGURE IT OUT.  She told us that she loves her job because it's never boring.  Although working in robotics is frustrating sometimes, it feels like she's still in school because she's always learning, except she gets paid a lot.

Warrior

RP-Vita

Orjeta expressed her frustration with the way robots are portrayed in movies because the robots we have today are nowhere near as sophistocated.  With that being said, she told us that there are 100 RP-Vita robots in hospitals today that monitor stroke victims so that doctors can login remotely and monitor patients to decide if a medicine to save their life is needed.  She also told a story about the Warrior robot which was deployed to the Fukushima nuclear disaster and is also used for explosive-disposal work in Iraq and Afghanistan.  She said that sometimes robots come back to the company completely blown up and they throw a party since it means that no human soldiers were killed.  She worked on a Robotic Rodeo and a Self-Driving Car.  When she looked at photos of the event she was the only female in a team of 30, but she said "Just ignore it."

After the presentations had concluded, a panel was available to take questions, which included the three speakers and added two PCC alumna.  Brandii encouraged all CS students to stay up to date with new languages including Ruby on Rails and Objective C.  Natalia told us about her current project CSUNSAT-1 CubeSat: A Collaboration Between NASA, JPL, and CSUN to conduct experiments in space.  Lan told us that FORTRAN language is still preferred by scientists at JPL but they package the code in C afterwards.  The #1 hirer of CS grads is the US government, so jobs being outsourced is not an issue.  Natalia shared her experience of teamwork: if the problem is challenging enough, the team will rely on the strengths of every team member regardless of gender.  To break down stereotypes, make yourself available to the team and they will see your skills.

MINORITY DOES NOT MEAN NOT VALUABLE

Brandii concluded the panel discussion by reiterating the importance of networking.  There are many avenues, Women In Tech and ACM-W, and it is important to inform your network when you are looking for a job.  Rely on networks, they will be with you forever!

The event was well put-together and I found my way there by following the balloons.  Grace and the CS club did a great job and I even got a T-Shirt that I wore proudly riding up and over Colorado Blvd to my study jam today.  I got to catch up with my friend Paul at CalTech, which was great.  I hope events like this can inspire more events like this and we can form a web of women to catch more of the talent that is currently being underutilized.